CFITrainer.Net Podcast

The IAAI and CFITrainer.Net present these podcasts with a focus on issues relating to fire investigation. With expertise from around the world, the International Association of Arson Investigators produces these podcasts to bring more information and electronic media to fire investigators looking for training, education and general information about fire investigation. Topics include recent technologies, issues in the news, training opportunities, changes in laws and standards and any other topic that might be of interest to a fire investigator or industry professional affected by fire. Information is presented using a combination of original stories and interviews with scientists, leaders in fire investigation from the fire service and the law enforcement community.

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Transcript

Welcome to this edition of the IAAI’s CFITrainer.Net podcast. Today, we focus on the fire research work of Underwriters’ Laboratories, better known as UL. UL’s research agenda over the past four years has been taking an in-depth look at the many facets of changing home construction and how they impact fire dynamics. In a few minutes, Steve Kerber, the Director of UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute, will be with us here to talk about UL’s most recent and upcoming fire research. But first, a little background.

Even though there have been technological improvements in firefighting equipment and protective gear, firefighter fatalities on the fire ground have actually been increasing. One possible reason for this counterintuitive rise may be the change in buildings construction, construction materials, and home furnishings. Although the intent of this change - or these changes was to improve efficiency, reduce cost, speed construction time, add modern conveniences, and improve sustainability, they may also have an unintended negative impact on safety, fire ignition, and fire spread. Since 2008, UL has invested in research to understand the correlation between changes in construction and the new array of risks for firefighters and consumers. UL research has focused on materials, construction methods and newer home systems (such as photovoltaic panels) that’ll help them understand how they impact the behavior of fire and the composition of smoke, and therefore, how to understand, prevent and mitigate the risks involved. Many of these topics directly affect fire investigation, including potential ignition sources, fire patterns, fire development and spread, and safety concerns.

To discuss recent research findings from UL and to look ahead, we are pleased to have Steve Kerber from UL with us today. Steve is an expert on improving firefighter safety, fire service ventilation, lightweight construction and smoke management fire modeling. He is 13-year veteran of the fire service, a registered professional engineer, and holds advanced degrees in fire protection engineering. Steve, welcome to the podcast.

STEVE KERBER: Thanks Rod.

ROD: So, what are some of the overall findings that are emerging from the body of fire research UL has been doing? What does this mean for fire investigators?

STEVE KERBER: At UL we’ve been lucky enough to receive some funding recently from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the assistance of the firefighter grant program, and through that we’ve been able to do all kinds of large scale experiments looking at a lot of the problems the fire service faces and through that we’re starting to put together a lot of trends. Many of them have to do with the fire dynamics in single family homes and how we’ve been able to compare them to what we would consider legacy or my grandfather’s fire that he may have responded to and we’re seeing that fires are spreading faster than they ever have. They’ve got higher heat release rates. We’re seeing that occupants have less time to escape, collapse times are shorter, a whole bunch of pieces.

There’s more hazards today such as solar panel systems and the like and we’ve been picking those components together, essentially the system of the residential home and picking them apart one at a time and looking at how it would impact the fire department response, and clearly, once you understand how it impacts the fire service response, there’s a lot of factors there that would impact fire investigators such as the importance of understanding how the fire got the oxygen, understanding flow paths, understanding the speed at which fire grows and spreads and subsequently what would be seen after the fact by the investigators is going to be different today than it was in the past.

ROD: What has UL research found with regard to PV panels?

STEVE KERBER: I mean, one, they’re a great new advancement in energy, and in order to understand their benefits you also have to understand how they’re going to impact the fire service and maybe ultimately fire investigators. We saw how fire grows and spreads when a fire gets into the panel system. We looked at several safety issues such as how to secure the power, and whether it’s the fire service or fire investigators, it’s important that if you’re going to do your investigation or you’re going to complete your overhaul that you understand how to do that safely, and having DC voltage is something that’s a little bit different for the fire service. I think we’re used to securing the utilities when it involves AC power or natural gas and now we’ve got a DC power source that you can’t exactly turn off, and it was important to understand how the systems work and understand that when you, when you do disconnect the inverter from the panels themselves that you’re just securing the AC side of the power going into the house and not the DC being generated.

We looked at ways to cover the panels and there are proper ways and improper ways depending on what you have to cover the panels using black visqueen, for example, was very successful, versus some of the new modern salvage covers that the fire service would have or fire investigators would have, while it looked like it may have worked, it didn’t necessarily cut down the power enough to make is safe to operate around that system. Understanding that the wiring going from the panels to the inverter could still be energized, so it’s important to cover those panels or to make sure as you’re conducting your investigation, even if it’s in the interior of the house, you need to understand where that wiring runs because if there’s any bit of sun outside, those wires are going to be hot. So, many other topics like that we compiled into an online training program that you can go to UL’s website to view.

ROD: Excellent. You mentioned earlier about lithium ion batteries. What’s UL research found there and why is that important to fire investigators?

STEVE KERBER: In many cases, if you’re going to store the power from the solar panel system, you’re going to need a battery bank in order to do so, and UL has a lot of research going on right now in the topic of lithium ion batteries, whether it’s individual cells or all the way up through computer batteries or larger than that, the storage of batteries and a lot of it’s still underway so there’s not a lot of results to talk about, but I think importantly, that copious amounts of water to control that and understanding the potential fault paths and how those batteries fail could be very important for fire investigators to find exports in order to nail down whether or not that was the source or not.

ROD: When you say copious amounts of water, I just sort of want to clarify because, well, as a guy who doesn’t know enough about this topic, when I think about spraying water around things that generate electricity, could you be more specific?

STEVE KERBER: Sure, absolutely. That the - I mean, the power off of battery storage is going to be different than power out of an AC system or DC system, so it’s maybe not as important for investigators but for the fire service to control those fires. There was some research done, I believe it was by the NFPA, that looked at the ability to use water to suppress the lithium ion battery fires and it was very successful.

ROD: So the part about making this safe, making these batteries and making the photo voltaic panel connections and everything around them safe, that’s handled in your online learning at UL?

STEVE KERBER: Absolutely. We’ve got a very comprehensive online training program that covers the solar panels. There’s also some, we have a new science campaign which we’re calling it that has an entire essentially journal dedicated to the topic of lithium ion batteries, so you’ll be able to see the latest and greatest there.

ROD: Excellent. I’ve seen a lot of that related to vehicles, and that’s an ever-changing pieces as well. So one of the major factors considered in fire investigation is the effect of ventilation on the fire’s growth and development, and the ventilation generated patterns can obviously impact how a fire investigator determines origin and cause. Can you tell us about the research UL has done on horizontal and vertical ventilation and what that means for fire investigators? Can you give us sort of a summary?

STEVE KERBER: Sure. We did several multi-year studies looking at both horizontal and vertical ventilation, and really it’s being able to understand the flow path of how the fire is getting the air, where it’s exhausting its gases, understanding the pressures that exist within the structure to determine where that fire’s going to grow and spread, and specifically for investigators, in order to properly do an investigation of that fire, you need to be paying attention to where that fire got its air from because your heaviest damage may be very remote from where the fire started based on where it got the oxygen from in the very simple fire triangle principles and, again, we have online training programs for both of these explaining how fire grows and spreads, how it reacts to fire service horizontal ventilation, whether it’s doors or windows or how that may be different if a hole is cut in the roof and really walks through the dynamics and the timing of how long it may take some of these things to occur and, of course, understanding that and showing that it happens faster today than it happened in the past. So there might be some - some updates there on current understanding of the speed at which these events occur and really understanding that the stages of fire development aren’t cut and dry. They aren’t very simple from the standpoint of the fire grows, becomes fully developed and then decays.

It’s important to understand that the fire is going to grow, run out of oxygen and it’s going to behave very differently depending on where it gets that oxygen and how much oxygen it gets to determine, there may be several growth stages of the fire depending on how the fire department or how the fire creates its own openings to dictate what the fire service is going to see when they arrive, how they interact with it and then ultimately what’s left for the fire investigator to piece together. So the fire service can have a huge impact on what those patterns are going to look like afterwards depending on how they fight the fire and it’s - I would say it’s - not that this doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s imperative for the fire investigators to really put a good timeline together to understand what happened on the fire ground.

ROD: A lot of changes both in fuels and the way fires are fought are going to really influence these fire investigators in the way they work.

STEVE KERBER: Absolutely, and certainly to add on to that would be today’s construction practices that you’re going to see possibly different mechanisms of fire spread into void spaces, into wall cavities, into attics and things like that based on new uses of materials that you’re going to see out there. Clearly, we’re optimizing how we build houses today taking a lot of the redundancies out of the houses that would have existed in the past by using lighter weight materials and different types of materials, which are going to be, fire investigators really need to stay on top of what these houses are being built out of.

ROD: So I was lucky enough to get out to Governors Island and saw what you were doing with the folks from NIST and from the Fire Department of New York, and I’m going a little bit off script here, but just wondering what blew you away? There was so much information. I saw a lot of firefighters’ faces and a lot of leadership sort of getting pretty visible aha moments.

STEVE KERBER: I don’t think anything really blew me away because, I mean, the Governors Island was a great opportunity to put together and to expand upon things that we had done in the past, so it was really an exercise of taking everything that we learned in the previous ten years to that and doing it in front of the New York City Fire Department leadership and really showing that, hey, just because this happened in a lab in a full scale house that we built in the lab is no different than the structure out in the middle of an island, kind of comparing the real structure verse laboratory test and bringing it all together.

The one thing that it really solidified for us is the whole concept of knowledge verse belief, that we were surrounded by a lot of very experienced fire chiefs that had really strong opinions on what they thought they were going to see, and when they were standing over our shoulders watching the interior video cameras, in many cases they were expecting things to happen that didn’t happen, and I think that’s what you’re referring to is there was kind of some aha’s or some puzzled looks. They believed something was going to happen and when it didn’t, they felt confused, which gave us the opportunity to really explain the fire dynamics to them, take the knowledge that they’ve gained over time through their experience and really try and understand the variables around it because it’s so important not to discount people’s experience. If they’ve seen something with their own eyes, where we’ve had a lot of success, both UL and NIST, has been to validate their experience or allow them to better understand what was going on around their experience because the fire...extremely complex and there’s a lot of things happening at the same time, there’s different points of view. I mean, people can only see one vantage point.

You’re also not going to a ton of fires that are exactly the same so it’s hard to put the pieces together, so many times we start applying things that we saw in one setting to another setting where maybe they don’t apply. So it was a really great opportunity to, I mean, basement fires was a great example, putting water in through a window in a basement fire to gain the upper hand. We had measurements and thermal imaging views of the top of the stairwell and a lot of those chiefs swore that the moment water went in through that basement window that a large amount of fire was going to come up through those interior stairs and actually the opposite happened.

Things cooled off quite a bit and they had experienced in their career being in that position and getting extremely hot when water got put into a window and we had to help put that into perspective, again, by explaining being in the flow path verse not being in the flow path, pressure differences, gas cooling, understanding steam expansion verse gas contraction for cooling and putting a lot of those pieces together, and I think we’ve really come a long way in the last five or six years because of these projects and because of the tremendous partnership between the researchers and the fire service. The fire service really wants to get better as does the fire investigation community, and if we can get them visuals to better understand what they’re seeing in the field, then everyone’s going to advance forward.

ROD: It was beautiful opportunity to tie science and observation to the folks that are out there, in an emotional way, I’m sure very often responding with concern for life, having that concern for life sort of taking out of the equation and being able to allow them to observe the fire, I think that was so incredibly valuable and it was great to watch. I think it’s going to be, as you said, a wonderful move forward. So when you think about this, it leads to safety and it leads to making the fire ground a place where firefighters can be more effective and be more careful with their own lives and hopefully save more lives. Can you talk a little bit about the safety perspective for firefighters and for fire investigators?

STEVE KERBER: Sure. I think that it all comes around to understanding the hazards, and clearly, the fire service is showing up for life safety and that is absolutely paramount, however, it doesn’t need to come to the detriment of their own safety, and clearly, it’s a hazardous job, but if we can allow them to better understand a lot of the hazards that they’re up against and specifically how they’ve changed over time; there’s many firefighters that have received training and there’s no continuing education requirements, so what they know about fire behavior might have been 30 years ago and haven’t looked at any changes since, and, I mean, we’ve had projects that have looked at the collapse hazards, we’ve looked at smoke toxicity, so what’s in the smoke during overhaul, we did a really comprehensive study on that and, I mean, that is paramount for fire investigators as well, and I know others have studied this, but we saw that I think it was 97% of the smoke particulate in the air during the overhaul stage is so small, it’s invisible to the naked eye. So when we don’t have some hard measure to say this environment is safe to conduct your investigation in, we might be unknowingly exposing our folks to conditions that we shouldn’t be exposing them to, and I think we need to take that a lot more seriously because there isn’t a gas measurement that you can make that says it’s okay to operate in that environment, so there’s probably some more work that needs to be done there.

We’ve got a project right now that would be very interesting to investigators, and that’s fires that start on the outside of structures and also attic fires where we’re seeing that as energy codes evolve and demands are being put in place get higher energy efficiency on the wrapping of homes that a simple change of switching out a solid piece of wood for a rigid foam board, for example, is going to do great energy-wise, but we’re seeing fire spread that is on the order of going, starting at the base of the wall and winding up in the attic in less than two minutes, and when you look at the average response time of the fire service, you’re going to have very different damage and very different hazards upon arrival today then may have been experienced in the past, and clearly, as the fires get into the attic, they become every difficult to fight. There’s a large fuel load up there and a collapse hazard as well as a fire dynamics hazard of if you get underneath it and make some openings, it might seek a low pressure through the crew that’s trying to find the attic fire, so we’re also studying that as well. So there’s a lot of new hazards that need to be well understood because you want to understand them ahead of time, not when you’re showing up to deal with it and get surprised, so we’re trying to get ahead of the game a little bit with our, with the firefighter research, which haven’t really happened in the past that much.

ROD: I know the work you’re doing is very, very appreciated around the country when I’ve traveled. I hear about you and Dan Madrzykowski and UL and NIST and the things that you’re doing, it’s blinding how excited people are. They’re just sort of blown away. So what am I missing, anything that you want to communicate to fire investigators that we haven’t talked about?

STEVE KERBER: I think the big thing is where to go for more information. I think that certainly we scratched the surface and we just created the UL Firefighter’s Safety Research Institute within UL which was just tremendous. It’s given us more resources, it’s given us a focus to completely serve the fire service community around the world and with that we’ve launched a new website, ULfirefightersafety.com. We also have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and the purpose behind that is to, in the past it’s been we get a grant, we conduct the grant, two years later we release a report and an online training program. A lot happens in that two years and we want to bring the fire service, the fire investigation community into the projects so not only do we have a fire service technical panel that’s serving us, we want to put every update on our web page as it happens, also invite people to participate, invite people to come watch tests so folks know what’s going on all along the way and not just at the end because there’s a lot of interesting information that comes out, a lot of potentially lifesaving information that gets developed along the way, so we want to open up the process and make it a huge partnership so if folks could go there and watch what’s going on. They’ll be pretty much up to the week with what’s happening.

ROD: Thank you very much for your time, Steve. We’re really grateful.

STEVE KERBER: I appreciate the opportunity, Rod.

ROD: We have links to a lot of this material available on this podcast page, so please be sure to check those out. Staying up to date on fire research is critical to fulfilling the requirements of NFPA 1033 and this is one way to do that.

That concludes this podcast. Remember to take a minute to click some of the resource links on this podcast page to learn more about the results of UL’s recent fire research. Stay safe, we’ll see you next time on CFITrainer.Net. For the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net, I’m Rod Ammon.

Other Episodes

2019

April 2019 Podcast
- April '19 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. There are two new additions to CFITrainer.Net! A new podcast with Dan Madrzykowski from UL speaking about ventilation and Fire Flow, and a new module called “Fire Flow Analysis”.

March 2019 Podcast
- March '19 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast includes updates from the IAAI related to the election, the upcoming ITC, and a new website specifically about evidence collection. After the updates, you will also hear some news stories related to fire investigation.

January 2019 Podcast
- January '19 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we’re looking back on some of the biggest issues in fire investigation in 2018.

2018

November 2018 Podcast
- November '18 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we talk with Jeff Pauley from the IAAI’s Health and Safety Committee. Jeff is an IAAI-CFI and the Chairman of the Health and Safety Committee. In this podcast, he talks about ways to reduce exposure to carcinogens related to fire investigation. By listening, you will learn about ways to reduce your risks, learn about new resources that are available to assist you, and research that is coming soon.

October 2018 Podcast
- October '18 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month meet and learn about IAAI’s new Executive Director, Scott Stephens and plans for the future. After that interview, hear some wild stories from the national news related to fire investigation.

What you need to know about Arson Awareness week
- April '18 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we welcome Tonya Hoover, the Superintendent of the National Fire Academy. Superintendent Hoover came to the NFA with more than 20 years of experience in local and state government, most recently as the California State Fire Marshal.

Growing pot and earning Bitcoin can start fires?
- March '18 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. In this month’s podcast, hear a story about how the Bitcoin business might be causing fires? What similarities are there between Pot growers and now Bitcoin miners?

Training related to wildland fire investigation
- February '18 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast highlights new training related to wildland fire investigation featuring an interview with Paul Way, and this year’s International Training Conference. We also have a pretty wild story before we wrap up. Birds starting fires?

2017

Smart homes and digital data gathering issues
- December '17 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. In this podcast, we discuss two topics on the technology and forensics cutting edge. Michael Custer of Kilgore Engineering, Inc. and retired Special Agent Tully Kessler share some knowledge and give us a taste of the classes that they will be presenting at ITC 2018.

Discussion with Writer Monica Hesse
- September '17 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. In this podcast, you will hear some great news related to the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net and then we have an interview with Monica Hesse, the writer of a new book called "American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land."

Discussion with Criminalist- John DeHaan
- June '17 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month on the CFITrainer.Net podcast, we talk to Criminalist, fire investigation expert and Author of "Kirk’s Fire Investigation", John DeHaan.

The Ghost Ship
- May '17 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. For this podcast, we hear from a retired Captain of the Long Beach Fire Department, Pat Wills. Pat has been in the fire service for 37 years. He has been a leader and an investigator, now he is an educator speaking around the country about the importance of code enforcement.

Fast Podcast about ITC!
- March '17 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we talk to David Bridges about what to expect at ITC and the training you won’t want to miss.

CFITrainer Podcast- A profile with an IAAI-CFI®
- February '17 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. Join us this month for our podcast as we interview IAAI member and CFI, Jeff Spaulding from Middletown, Ohio. Jeff talks about his work in both the public and private sector and then he shares an interesting story about how a pacemaker is helping in an investigation.

2016

An interview with Dr. James Quintiere
- December '16 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. In a discussion with Dr. James Quintiere, we learn about some of his work in fire sciences, a bit about his research, his opinions related to the World Trade Center investigation and what he thinks is important to fire investigation as a scholarly leader in our field.

September 2016 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- September '16 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we talk about the recent changes in the FAA's regulations for commercial and public sector use of UAS or "Drones".

August 2016 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- August '16 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we talk to Jessica Gotthold about the Seaside Heights fire in NJ from 2013

July 2016 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- July '16 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we talk to Fire Marshall, Ken Helms of the Enid, OK. Fire Department about his team winning the Fire Investigator of the Year award.

March 2016 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- March '16 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's fire investigation podcast from the IAAI's CFITrainer.Net focuses on the Youth Firesetting Information Repository and Evaluation System, which is called YFIRES for short.

February 2016 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- February '16 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's fire investigation podcast from the IAAI's CFITrainer.Net focuses on what you need to do to ensure the integrity of samples sent to the lab. A conversation with Laurel Mason of Analytical Forensic Associates.

2015

September 2015 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- September '15 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. Our podcast related to the legalization of recreational marijuana and its effect on fire investigation was one of the most popular podcasts ever on CFITrainer.Net. This month’s podcast is a follow up with one of our listeners from California who is an investigator doing training on this very topic.

August 2015 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- August '15 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast is about NFIRS where we interview the Executive Director of The National Association of State Fire Marshals Fire Research and Education Foundation, Jim Narva.

July 2015 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- July '15 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. In this special edition of podcast we’re going to meet the newest IAAI Investigator of the Year, Andrea Buchanan.

April 2015 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- April '15 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's Arson Investigator podcast from IAAI & CFITrainer interviews Dave Perry, a lawyer in Colorado discussing what fire chiefs, fire investigators, and the legal system are seeing in a state with legalized cannabis in regard to fire cause involving marijuana.

February 2015 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- Feb '15 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's Arson Investigator podcast from IAAI & CFITrainer interviews Mike Schlatman and Steve Carman who are both successful fire investigators and now business owners who have transitioned from the public to the private sector.

2014

December 2014 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- December '14 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast interviews Steve Avato from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives explaining the process of elimination and how it is a critical part of the scientific method.

April 2014 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- April '14 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast interviews with Don Robinson, Special Agent in Charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Currently stationed at the National Center for Explosives Training and Research, located at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

2013

February 2013 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- February '13 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month we have an interview with George Codding who returned from a recent trip to Saipan and gives us a closer look at the international activities of the International Association of Arson Investigators

2012

Mid Year 2012 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- Mid Year '12 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This podcast features a mid-year update on the IAAI’s new initiatives and ways for you to get more involved with the organization.

September 2012 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- September '12 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast features an in-depth look at the recent live-burn fire experiments exercise conducted on Governor’s Island, New York by the New York City Fire Department, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Underwriters Laboratory, and the Trust for Governor’s Island.

August 2012 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- August '12 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This is a special edition of the CFITrainer.Net podcast previewing the ITC 2013. There’s a new name for the Annual Training Conference from the IAAI now called the International Training conference.

April 2012 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- April '12 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast features an interview with Chief Ernest Mitchell, Jr., the US Fire Administrator. Also we will discuss the upcoming ATC, Annual Training Conference, from the IAAI about to happen in Dover, Delaware.

March 2012 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- March '12 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast features an interview with ATF Special Agent Billy Malagassi out of the Tulsa, OK Field Office about investigating fires in clandestine drug labs. We also report on NIST’s findings in the Charleston Sofa Super Store fire and IAAI’s Evidence Collection Practicum.

2011

December 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- December '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast features one of the presenters from this year’s IAAI ATC and see how a single photo broke the Provo Tabernacle fire case.

October 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- October '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast features an interview with Deborah Nietch, the new Executive Director of IAAI.

June 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- June '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month's podcast features a lot of exciting things that are happening at CFITrainer.Net

May 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- May '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month highlights the IAAI ATC in Las Vegas and the third installment in the "It Could Happen to You" series.

April 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- April '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This podcast announces the release of the program, The First Responder’s Role in Fire Investigation, which teaches first responders how to make critical observations and take important scene preservation actions at a fire scene.

March 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- March '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features some of the instructors from the upcoming 2011 Annual Training Conference, to provide a preview of the courses they will be presenting.

February 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- February '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features an update on fire grants and an interview with Steve Austin

January 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- January '11 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features the release of the new edition of Fire Investigator: Principles and Practice to NFPA 921 and 1033, new flammability requirements from UL for pre-lit artificial Christmas trees and a growing fire problem in Dubai with factories turned into worker dormitories.

August 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- August '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast focuses on social media as a fire investigation tool, a potential problem with modular home glued ceilings and research from Underwriters Laboratories on the effects of ventilation on structure fires.

July 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- July '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast is a roundtable on some of the latest research and technical activities that impact fire investigation, featuring Daniel Madrzykowski (moderator), Steven Kerber, and Dr. Fred Mowrer.

May 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- May '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. The second in our safety series called "It Could Happen To You." Our Long-Term Exposure roundtable is moderated by Robert Schaal.

April 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- April '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. The first of our two-part safety series called "It Could Happen To You." Our roundtable is moderated by Robert Schaal.

March 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- March '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features a conversation about legislative affairs affecting the fire service with Bill Webb, Executive Director of the Congressional Fire Services Research Institute.

February 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- February '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features our interview with a commercial kitchen’s fire expert about what you need to know when you work a commercial kitchen fire.

January 2010 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- January '10 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features a look at preliminary research on corrosion caused by Chinese drywall, a new database focused on fires in historic buildings, a warning on blown-in insulation, and the launch of the new firearson.com web site.

2009

December 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- December '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features cooking fires, highlights of the International Code Council’s Annual Meeting on code requirements, including requiring residential sprinkler systems, and an easy way to keep up with recalls from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

November 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- November '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features chimney fires, including recent news on surgical flash fires, a proposed national arsonist registry, lightning research and an innovation in personal protective equipment.

September 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- September '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features the relationship between climate conditions and fire risk, new research on formulating fireproof walls and the latest in IAAI news.

August 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- August '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month takes a look at the dangerous combination of summer heat and oily rags, the rise in vacant home fires, and preview research underway on Australia’s devastating "Black Saturday" brush fires.

July 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- July '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month features a look at outdoor grill fires, a fatal fire at a homeless camp in Southern NJ, new NIST research on human behavior during building fires, and IAAI news.

June 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- June '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features live reports from the 2009 IAAI Annual Training Conference held in May.

April 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- April '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast features the NFPA 921 chapter on marine fire investigations and the myth and reality of static electricity as a source of ignition.

March 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- March '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month focuses on the rise of the hybrid vehicle and what its unique engineering means for the investigation of vehicle fires, the rash of devastating arson fires in Coatesville, Pennsylvania from December 2008 to February 2009, and news from IAAI.

January 2009 CFITrainer.Net Podcast
- January '09 IAAI & CFITrainer Fire Investigator Podcasts. This month’s podcast focuses on the deepening financial crisis in the US and arson for profit fires, how going green may pose a fire hazard and see how rope lighting may be a source of ignition, and IAAI’s Expert Witness Courtroom Testimony course.